After a month-long shutdown, NASA was able to save Hubble

What a relief! After spending more than a month in an artificial coma following a material failure, the popular Hubble Space Telescope was finally able to return to work on July 16. To mark the occasion, he split some beautiful pictures, which include two constellations.

Hubble’s back! 🎉

After the Hubble team successfully ran the backup hardware on the telescope, the lab came back to work over the weekend and took these Galaxy snapshots.

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– Hubble (ASNASAHubble) July 19, 2021

He had been on loan since June 13, when one of the craft box computers suddenly stopped working. So the engineers could not access any tools, however they were working. First, NASA tried to restart it on several occasions, without success.

Dangerous maintenance of a very old system

So they tried to identify the elements that were on the side. As expected, this is the Power Control Unit (PCU), a device that acts like a fuse. According to Science Post, If the voltage goes beyond a certain allowable range, the secondary circuit immediately puts the whole system on standby to protect it. According to the engineering team, the Hubble failure may have been caused by an abnormal voltage. The secondary circuit may be stuck in safety mode, thus shutting off all equipment.

Fortunately, like most objects we send into space, Hubble is equipped to deal with this situation, at least in theory. Because if he had a second backup computer that would be identical to its own PC in every genre, using it would be trivial, but insignificant. Launched in the late 1990s and designed in the 1990s, the technology had to be pursued by engineers without serious haste. But thanks to their expertise, the function went well and Hubble is back in action.

Hubble leaves for ten years

So he benefits from a new relief that could bring him to the horizon by 2030. He will then celebrate his fortieth year of service, the nominating age for a scientific instrument. But before paving the way for its successor, the James Webb Telescope, Hubble could offer us some more services. Until he retires, Hubble will have several more surveillance missions.

NASA wants to keep an eye on the galaxies that it considers particularly “bizarre”, indicating some exciting new developments. It will also scan for global clusters, a recently identified study The cause of stellar currents. Finally, he will take some pictures of Jupiter Aurora, which will definitely give us some fantastic pictures.